Massachusetts Stone Bound Questions

I've never dealt with stone bounds, but the inscription sort of looks like a 4-digit year to me. 1 something 0 0?

I don't have any good software to edit images on my computer but you could try to play around with it in photoshop or similar to bring out the color better.  I am seeing 188_  

Could try a rubbing or even take a wire brush to clean the lichens off.  Might even use feel to follow the grooves as well.  I often need to find chiseled marks on stone retaining walls and cleaning does wonders on those where the lichens are obscuring things.  

The upper part of the inscription appears to have been broken off.  Below the upper part might be a heart, and below that "1800" or similar.

(I also have no experience with stone bounds in MA.)

The inscription looks like it might be a year - 18__. Is the bound near a road, or a discontinued road? Could be a (county) road layout bound. From the appearance I would guess that the bound was cut in the early half the 1800's.

I have seen private bounds engraved with the owner's initials on couple of large estates, although those had newer, more symmetrically cut stone.

I think the Harvard, MA Shakers set some rather large bounds to mark a waterline easement that had some lettering and maybe the date carved in them.

Where in Middlesex County? I work in Framingham.

And as jhframe observed, it appears the top may be broken off. You should dig around and see if you can find it buried in the leaf mould.

I see 1820

@peter-lothian my first thought as well was an old county layout bound.

To the OP, Depending on where you are though, it could be an old town bound marker. Town bounds supposed to be located and marked with the year every 5/10 years. It’s a law that’s still on the books, but towns hardly ever do it anymore. 

This could be a bound of a unincorporated town? What town was this found in?

@jim-frame After I posted, I noticed the possible inscriptions near the apparently broken top. But I didn't notice the possible heart until you mentioned it!

If you head back out there, bring a water bottle and try wetting it. Don't drench it, but run a little bit of water over the lettering. Sometimes it's easier to see the darker wet stone against the lighter dry stone. Or even trying to follow it with a pocket knife to clear the lichen.

@peter-lothian That's an intriguing idea about it perhaps being a road layout bound. The 1924 plan does show an "old road," said to be 35 feet wide (and drawn as such on the plan), and related deeds refer to the centerline of that old road as a boundary. The old road as shown on that plan looks like an extension of a dead-end road that is a public road today. There is a hiking trail today that runs where the old road is shown on the 1924 plan.

The 1924 plan shows this stone bound as being about 28 feet from the nearer edge of the old road (i.e. about 46 feet from the old road's centerline), but I suppose that doesn't rule out this stone as being a layout bound: depending on how old that road was, the 1924 surveyor might have had difficulty in locating its centerline, or maybe the intended width of the ROW had been changed over time, or maybe there was a realignment. It'll be interesting to try to figure out the history of that old road.

@peter-lothian This is just a few towns away from you. I'll private-message more info to you. With the forum being publicly readable, I don't want to give aid to antique-seeking vandals.

@dgm-pls Thank you for the tips about wire brushing and about reading by feel.

I see two letters (CC?) in the top.

Then the number 2.

Then 1800.

Then an illegible mark below that.

If you make a trip back out there, take a bottle of water and a wire brush. Brush the areas of the inscriptions, then splash some water on there to help make the marks "pop".

Edit: I did not see the previous mention of wire brushing, but it does work wonders!

Here is what I am seeing.

I cannot tell if this is a monument along a roadway.  If it is (1) look at the massDOT Survey Manual page 30, (F) State and Town Lines and Corners.

"Road stones do not carry the legal weight of town corners and should not be considered correct unless confirmed by survey measurements. Many road stones have been shown to be in error by 50 m or more."

(2) Go to the Harbor and Land Commission Atlas for the town in question.  https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/collections/commonwealth-oai:pc289q78j.   Find the Road Stone section to see if it is a road stone.

If I'm off base just ignore.

@tony Thank you for the ideas. The nearby town boundary was defined in 1871, and as I note in my response above to @peter-lothian, the 1924 plan does show an old road crossing that boundary. Again, there's no nearby corner of that boundary, so maybe this stone was set to indicate where the road crossed the town boundary. However, my suspicion is that in 1871 such a marker would have been a taller stone, such as I believe were being set by the 1890s, and that still exist. Still, it is something to consider.

By the way, regarding unincorporated towns, there is no unincorporated land in Massachusetts, with the possible exception of a less-than-two-acres rock ledge, far off Boston Harbor, that has a lighthouse that's now privately owned.

I'll private-message you further info about this stone bound.

@jmcnicholspls Good ideas. The Massachusetts Atlas of Boundaries volume for the towns in question does have a Road and Line Stones section, but I don't see any entries that are reasonable matches to the location of this stone bound. It might be a road stone related to the "old road" I've mentioned in my other comments, and that wasn't found by the Massachusetts Topographical Survey Commission during their ~1884 – ~1914 work.

@hi-staker That's two votes for wire brushing! And if the inscription really is for the year 1800, that would be very cool.

Go easy on the wire brush so you don't remove actual stone. 

@gary_g Shouldn't be an issue with granite.

I have wire-brushed more stones than I can count, and have never had a single instance where the wire brush did any significant "erosion" to the stones.